Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship (Allen Lane Science) (Hardcover)

Conceived in the wake of Sputnik, Project Orion was a true vision of 50s engineering: a huge 40-person ship powered by hundreds of tiny atomic bombs, capable of much greater lift and efficiency than chemically driven rockets. Struggles between NASA, the military, Congress, and other parties doomed Orion, but Dyson has gathered hundreds of documents and interviewed most of the researchers and engineers who worked together, trying to reach "Saturn by 1970". His knack for storytelling makes the book a quick, delightful read; even the staunchest anti-nuke activist has to admit that lighting a cigarette off a parabolic mirror facing a bomb test is pretty cool. By the end of the 20th century, technology had caught up with the vision of Orion--it's considered one of our best bets for long-distance space transit. Whether or not that could ever happen politically, Project Orion is a compelling exploration of scientific imagination. --Rob Lightner

Review
In 1957 a small group of scientists launched Project Orion - a serious attempt to build an interplanetary spaceship propelled by nuclear bombs. This was the period when Atlas missiles loaded with thermonuclear warheads could deliver a force of a hundred times that of the Hiroshima bomb to a target 5,000 miles away. In complete secrecy a plan was hatched which would load a group of civilians into one of the missiles, and use the power of the bombs to deliver them to Mars, Jupiter or Saturn (what they might actually do when they got there was a low priority consideration - no one knew for certain what they might find). It all sounds ludicrously farcical now, half-a-century away, but then was taken very seriously indeed, and was top secret. The story should be a fascinating one - and in a sense, it is; the problem for the lay readers is that much of the drama was involved with technical problems which were no doubt rivetingly exciting to the scientists concerned, but which leave the non-technical reader cool, if not cold: how inflamed can one now get by the revelatory discovery that a certain kind of oil could shed a transpiration layer from the surface of a rocket, thus protecting it from ablation? And this is true, alas, of most of the ups and downs of scientific fortune that ran through the scheme, which eventually fizzled out like a failed take-off at Cape Canaveral, but happily less dangerously. Only the aficionado of genuine science-fact will find this book, with its many Heath-Robinson-esque illustrations, really exciting. (Kirkus UK)

Dyson, son of the distinguished British-born physicist Freeman Dyson, unveils a wealth of formerly classified information covering the attempt of a group of US scientists, beginning in 1957, to develop and launch a space vehicle powered solely by serial explosions of nuclear devices. The elder Dyson, who lends extensive personal perspectives here, was involved with the effort (sponsored by the Defense Department's hush-hush Advanced Research Projects Agency) from its inception; the list of its proponents reads like a roster of Nobel candidates, including one winner-the world-renowned atomic scientist Edward Teller. So it's made immediately clear that, as hard as it may be to accept, detonating nuclear bombs right behind a huge, bullet-shaped spaceship was, and still is, by some, considered not only a practical avenue of technical pursuit but one offering far more promise for extending man's horizon into the Solar System than those wimpy "chemical" rockets-the Atlases, Titans, etc.-that Wernher von Braun was simultaneously developing. (Briefed on Orion several years into the project, in fact, von Braun readily endorsed the concept.) Dyson's myriad interviews nicely capture the sweep of a grandiose technical scheme, but also the rapturous initial state of Orion scientists whose coup, as they see it, has them turning nuclear weapons into plowshares under the auspices-not to mention watchful eyes-of the same generals who want to back down the Soviet Union at any cost. However, political obstacles would become even more daunting than the considerable technical challenges, as small, fission-based devices (like those intended to boost Orion) came to be viewed in some circles as even more dangerous than megaton-yielding H-bombs (since military commanders might actually be tempted to use one). Ultimately, creeping realization that the potential effects of radioactive fallout had been dangerously understated for years undermined what support remained, and so Orion's budget was axed in 1964. An intimate look at an amazing concept some still believe offers the best hope for fending off-literally-an errant asteroid or comet that could wipe humankind from Earth. (Kirkus Reviews)

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